This is Big History. Big
history requires students to examine big questions:
• How has the Universe and life within it grown more complex over the past
13.7
billion years?

• How do we know what we know about the past?

• How can we judge claims about the past?

• Why does what we “know” change over time?

• How does what happened during the early days of the Universe, the Solar
System,
and the Earth shape what we are experiencing today?

• Where does mythology end and science begin?

• Why should we care about any of this?

No, not the television
show!

The term
Big Bang has become part of the standard scientific vocabulary, but it was
first coined in the 1940s as a putdown. The idea that the universe actually
had a beginning seemed just plain wacky -- especially since there was almost
no evidence at the time to support it. Yet by the end of the 1960s,
virtually all astrophysicists were convinced that the cosmos was born in a
single massive explosion, and doubters were left out on the fringe.

According
to the conventional explanation, the cosmos began to expand and cool
immediately after the moment of the Big Bang. For 300,000 years or so, the
expansion continued, but enormous numbers of tightly packed, free-ranging
electrons created a dense fog that kept light from shining: the universe was
hellishly hot, but utterly dark. Finally, the electrons were incorporated
into atoms, and the light broke free in a gigantic flash. Astronomers can
still see that ancient light, known as the cosmic background radiation,
although it has cooled to about -270 degrees C (-454 degrees F) and is
visible only to sensitive radio telescopes.

Yet the
Big Bang theory remains essentially intact because it is based on
three fundamental pieces of evidence, none of which can be accounted for by
any competing model. The first is the cosmic background radiation: its
evenness and the mix of electromagnetic wavelengths it contains can only
have come about, as far as anybody knows, if the universe was once dense,
hot and small. The second is the fact that the universe is expanding.
Calculating backward, one easily concludes that all the galaxies must have
come from a single point. Finally there is the fact that hydrogen makes up
75% of the matter in the universe and helium nearly 25%. These elements can
only be forged in a furnace as hot as the Big Bang, and the proportions
correspond exactly to what the Big Bang model posits.

There's something to keep
in mind: Theories are sometimes wrong. There ARE credible scientists that
think the Big Bang Theory gets the creation of the Cosmos wrong. So the
question is left begging. Is the Big Bang a modern form of mythology?

Mythology is the study of stories exploring fundamental
mysteries of existence, especially those pertaining to the following three
questions: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

I borrowed these questions from Paul Gauguin’s painting of
the same name, “Where Do We Come From? What are We? Where are We Going?”
You'll have to think this one out for yourself...